You can see how things would be different in a society collapse scenario. Money in the banks becomes meaningless, so does real estate prices. Gold may or may not be valuable, but lead and food will be.
This said, how do we estimate what will be valuable when the entire world shifts, and the old structures crumble? We can get some insights from collective communities like the Amish, but so many base layers/values shift. And so much of what was important is no longer.
Say, how much is a spatula worth? In today's world, you go to the dollars store and buy a cheap one for a dollar ($1.50 inflation). So, how much does that cost if electricity is pretty much free (say you had your own hydro-electric) and your 3D printer can just print one? In today's world, the spatula is made by a manufacturer, sold to a jobber, sold to a warehouse, sold and shipped to the retailer, and then you buy it. Meaning the $1 spatula costs less than 10¢ to make. And since you cut out a lot of the middleman and the tooling needed, but also got rid of the savings of manufacturing in bulk, so, lets say the spatula cost 20¢. That is a ⅕th of the price of the dollar store.
You can get a spatula, when you need it, for less than it costs from a store, what does this do to the entire structure of our current "capitalist" civilization?
Well, it changes everything. And that is just one facet of the change coming.
The assets of the future are a moving target
Gold will become VERY valuable. Probably $10,000 USD per ounce… while the dollar still exists. And before the point where everyone learns to hate gold. Or, bitcoin really takes over, and people, eventually, drop gold as it is slow, expensive to keep, hard to carry… Then its value is that of a pretty yellow rock.
City and suburban real estate absolutely tank. But, this is a slooooowww trainwreck. However, good homesteading land will become more and more valuable! Up until the point where it is seen that we really cannot deny an area of land, that no one else is using, from a group looking to make a community.
Bullets for a while, will be very valuable as "the law" breaks down. However, this is short term, not because "law and order" are restored, but because defensive inventions start to greatly overwhelm offensive inventions. Drone swarms are the latest war thingy. However, each attacking drone has to be expensive, carrying all its fuel and armaments to the defenders over unknown territory. While defense drones are cheap. They just have to get in the way. Two drones carrying a net between them. A drone, made from a balloon and a brick, that just sits there, in the way. On land, we will have pylons that can recognize the group it is guarding, and has many ways of dealing with others. Currently, we would probably arm it with machine guns with everything from rubber bullets to armor piercing rounds. In the near future we will have slug throwers. (not another name for a gun) A thing that takes a slug, and throws it very quickly. Its a pylon, stuck to the ground, it can have all the machinery it needs to do things. It is not carrying its payload anywhere. So, a thing that is basically a centrifuge, a very modern sling, that hurls slugs is quite easy to achieve.
And so it goes.
What is important in the future?
Imagine living in a small community with about 100 of your closest friends. And the next closest community is about 5 miles away. How important is gold? There isn't really a place to spend it. Depending on travel abilities, it could be next to impossible to deliver to the person you want to buy from. The network of stuff delivery, would be doubled burdened to carry gold in the opposite direction. It can happen, but if internetz is still a thing, crypto will be SOOO much easier, better, simpler, quicker…
Land, growing, food, children, community will be what is important in the future. But, will money be important? It depends on how self-sufficient each community is. It will basically come down to raw resources and high tech goods. Spools of plastic filament and computers. Imagine your current budget, your current use of money. No food from the grocery store, no, or little clothing from China, very little consumer goods, no rent/mortgage, no insurance (like we have today), no gasoline, no electric bill, no taxes. Basically, your expenditures are less than 10% of what we do now. Money will have to change, because how we use it today will be gone. It will probably only exist to trade between communities. (and maybe communities will have their own internal exchange) And, between communities, with each community building/creating/growing a very small set up goods, then computer aided barter will be far superior.
Imagine building with the future in mind. If you build a toaster, it will be rock solid. It will be repairable. It will be designed to last hundreds of years. The flow of trash (from China to land fill) will cease. We may get so good at rebuilding/repairing/recycling that we need very little new raw materials.
So, what will be most important in the future? Family/community. Dollar based assets of today will seem silly, not useful.
Transitioning
The big problem everyone is dealing with right now is how to save their wealth, and move it into the new paradigm.
"Where do i invest my money?"
The problem here, is that "invest" and "money" are changing.
And the short answer is have some cash (not in the bank), have some silver, and have some bitcoin. Each will be needed at different times through this change.
There will be a time when all the banks close. Where you won't be able to get "your money" out of the bank.
There will be a time when the dollar becomes worthless. And a new dollar is created to replace it.
There will be a time when "stable-coins", which could also be CBDCs become the "cash" in the system. (probably involving XRP/Ripple)
Then there will be a time when CBDCs are dropped like the hot-potatoe that it is.
During this time, bitcoin will continue going up, and there will be a time when you cannot exchange dollars/currency for it. Nobody, with bitcoin, wants that trash. Bitcoin will be exchanged directly for real world things.
Sometime in all of this, gold goes to, gets revalued to, $10,000 an ounce.
Silver becomes THE MOST IMPORTANT mineral. Like, national defense level important.
The gold/silver ratio will probably go 1:1. And, i do not know if silver goes to $10,000 or gold falls to $1,000. Silver will just be VALUABLE.
Bitcoin will be money for a while. But, this will come to an end, just because we develop even better money, before even better money, before we don't bother with money at all.
Community and growing your own food will be where it's at.
So many things change in the next few decades.
- We will have some form of continuous, non-polluting energy. And that changes the calculus on everything.
- Aliens will show up for all to see. And just knowing that they are there, and can do X, then we are more likely to figure out how to do X. The science books will be rewritten.
- The Bigs will collapse. And most of them won't ever be rebuilt. Like, we no longer need banks.
- The banksters get kicked off the planet.
- Government (will probably change name to "protectorate" or something) will actually be for the people.
And then, after that, we will count it as the START of civilization.
This time is just about surviving. Money, stuff, have / have-nots, displays of wealth, hoarding, will be unimportant on the other side. That said, there are less painful ways to survive.